On the other hand, Husk is a forty second walk from our back door...

It's funny how quickly one can discard a longstanding routine and become comfortable in a new one. Most of you are likely familiar with how pleasant the Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival is - three straight days of interesting speakers here at the Library Society, culminating with a big literary soiree Saturday afternoon. What you might not know is how expeditiously the Library staff transitions to the two hour long lunch break we get on LitFest days. Extra time to go out and have a long lunch here in one of the best cities in the nation for dining out? Yes, please.

Of course, your loyal blogger will live without the supersized lunch break. In fact, I'll probably live a little longer... so it goes.

This year's Festival was the most successful to date, with hundreds of attendees enjoying fine presentations by Bunny Hoest, Jay Parini, Ed Wilson, Alfred Malabre, Joshua Kendall, and Pat Conroy. Each of the speakers was wonderful in their own way: Bunny Hoest explaining all the hidden reference jokes in The Lockhorns, Jay Parini's explication/apology concerning the omission of The Great Gatsby in his 113 most important American books; Pat Conroy signing books for two straight hours.

And with that, it's summertime at the Library! Event season is officially over 'till fall. [Of course that doesn't mean we're getting too calm around here... Carolina Day is coming up soon, we're hosting a special Bastille Day event next month. Plus there's planning for all sorts of cool new fall events. And maybe a few summer surprises too.]

So stop by, check out the Literary Festival display (we've got some great rare books out... GWTW, To Kill A Mockingbird, the Porgo manuscript), and feel free to drop off a snack for your loyal blogger. He's hard pressed to make it all the way to Hominy Grill and back in a mere sixty minutes.

It's Literary Festival Eve Eve!

Once again, it's Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival time here at the Library Society! While we're used to hosting some pretty impressive speakers for this thing - Anne Rivers Siddons, Bret Lott, Sue Monk Kidd, Jack Hitt, and John McCardell, to name a very few - the 2011 Festival might be the first time we'll have an author here at the CLS in the same week as they've been reviewed in The New York Times Book Review.

Joshua C. Kendall, freelance journalist and author of The Man Who Made Lists, will be discussing his brand-new The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture. Your loyal blogger couldn't be more excited for this lecture, for Mr. Kendall's new book goes someplace Webster's biographies have rarely dared: he calls out Webster for being a jerk.

Pugnacious and penurious, Webster had little trouble offending friends or making enemies. He was a follower of Rousseau, and used his Dictionary and the "Blue Backed Speller" - really, he used every outlet he could- to promote a jingoistic American nationalism for the new republic. He despised Southerners. He rewrote the Bible to take out the naughty bits. 

He badmouthed Shakespeare on grammar issues.

But for all the bad things... Noah Webster was brilliant at the things he's famous for. The "Blue Backed Speller" taught generations of young Americans to read. His cutting-edge Dictionary did (eventually) succeed moulding "American english" to its strictures. He started the first daily newspaper in New York. He even founded Amherst College (alma mater of president Calvin Coolidge, librarian Melvil Dewey, frozen-food inventor Clarence Birdseye, and that guy who writes Get Fuzzy).

Pictured: Amherst College, second from right

In short, Noah Webster was a very interesting, very colourful guy, and this Saturday's LitFest lecture with Joshua Kendall should be equally entertaining. If you haven't got your tickets for it yet, get 'em here, or call 866.811.4111. And don't forget the rest of the schedule - Lockhorns cartoonist Bunny Hoest, author Jay Parini, WSJ theatre critic Ed Wilson, WSJ economics editor Alfred Malabre, and author/raconteur Pat Conroy.

Hey, who turned out the lights?

  Silence in the library. Some days it feels like a rarity- especially when we've hosted, by my count, just over twenty five events here in the past two months. But today, we've had silence in abundance. We've been joined by three patrons, four tourists, and the soft hum of forced air flowing through the ducts.

  Utter, crushing, silence.

  But not for long. One week from tomorrow is the start of the Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival. We'll welcome six great speakers here for some terrific daytime discussions of their work. Thursday the 2nd, we'll have cartoonist Bunny Hoest and author Jay Parini; Friday the 3rd, theatre critic Ed Wilson and economic writer Alfred Malabre; and wrapping things up on Saturday the 4th, journalist and author Joshua Kendall and author and raconteur Pat Conroy. Tickets for each speaker are $16 with the exception of Pat, which is $51 (though that one's a reception and fundraiser, so no mumbling about the price increase). Tickets are going quickly, so get yours today at piccolospoleto.com.

'Cause there's nothing worse than Silence in the library...